I find myself increasingly frustrated by woodcrafting craft timers. Let me try to explain why this is so frustrating to me.

I don't have the forage skill so I can't look for specific things, I basically roll the dice to forage for a copse of trees. Now when I find one that I can actually scout for trees, I have to scout the copse for a tree I can cut down. So I fail, and fail, and fail, and often times am lucky just to get one log from a copse.

This isn't that bad for me, I don't mind the grindy nature of it. But what kills me is the fact that each failure adds two hours to the craft timer. I finally get one log that I'll probably fail to make anything out of - but I have to wait because my craft timer is already maxed out.

I would really like it if when you fail to scout out a suitable tree to chop down, the craft-timer hit isn't so big. I have no idea how easy or hard that is to implement. But it's downright frustrating to finally get just one log, fail to make anything out of it, only to find that your craft timer is tapped out.

Nevermind that it's literally a forest out there. This boggles my mind. If I needed firewood I'd just go outside, spot the first tree I could find, and start chopping into it. But as it stands it's this really tedious process that makes no sense - like getting firewood from a forest.

I'm sorry if this sounds really whiny but I'm channeling some emotions here.

On that note, a lot of the crafts for woodcrafting are extremely frustrating to deal with, but I would say only for failures. I understand that it takes time to chop down a tree. But if you fail to even find one to chop down it still takes the same amount of time from your craft timer if you had managed to find one and chop it down. If you fail to yield anything but one plank from a log, it still takes two hours from your craft timer.

Normally the problem to "I fail every check I try" is "do checks at my level." Are there not tiers of/useful woodcraft skills at every level?

Woodcraft is already the easiest/best of the craftsuites, really only requiring one skill to make money with. With all the troubles you're having, I'm quite surprised, but I think the real answer is to just use crafts at your skill-level.

tehkory wrote:Normally the problem to "I fail every check I try" is "do checks at my level." Are there not tiers of/useful woodcraft skills at every level?

Woodcraft is already the easiest/best of the craftsuites, really only requiring one skill to make money with. With all the troubles you're having, I'm quite surprised, but I think the real answer is to just use crafts at your skill-level.

The problem is that the type of copse you discover through foraging (at least in my case) is entirely random. 23 types of copses exist from what I can tell, and I can only scout trees to collect logs from 6 of those types. So even if I'm trying to do something outside of my skill-level, when I discover a copse of trees I can potentially harvest it's a breakthrough by itself. This is that grindy nature I spoke of earlier in the sense that it can make many foraging attempts to find the right kind of tree. This often times takes a lot of time.

When I do finally get a log, it's just insult to injury when from a whole log I can only get one plank, and still have two hours of my craft timer used. It sucks when I find a copse and add ten hours to my craft timer and don't get a single log.

But overall, I don't make any money from these logs. Right now my ability to harvest these logs and turn them into their consumable materials determines the scale of production for the sphere I play on. Right now it teeters on nothing because of how unreliable getting wood is... in a forest.

tehkory wrote:Normally the problem to "I fail every check I try" is "do checks at my level." Are there not tiers of/useful woodcraft skills at every level?

Woodcraft is already the easiest/best of the craftsuites, really only requiring one skill to make money with. With all the troubles you're having, I'm quite surprised, but I think the real answer is to just use crafts at your skill-level.

The problem is that the type of copse you discover through foraging (at least in my case) is entirely random. 23 types of copses exist from what I can tell, and I can only scout trees to collect logs from 6 of those types. So even if I'm trying to do something outside of my skill-level, when I discover a copse of trees I can potentially harvest it's a breakthrough by itself. This is that grindy nature I spoke of earlier in the sense that it can make many foraging attempts to find the right kind of tree. This often times takes a lot of time.

When I do finally get a log, it's just insult to injury when from a whole log I can only get one plank, and still have two hours of my craft timer used. It sucks when I find a copse and add ten hours to my craft timer and don't get a single log.

But overall, I don't make any money from these logs. Right now my ability to harvest these logs and turn them into their consumable materials determines the scale of production for the sphere I play on. Right now it teeters on nothing because of how unreliable getting wood is... in a forest.

Are you using the forage survey command to target your foraging, or just randomly aiming?

Very Common Items:
1: a stick of $woodtype wood
Common Items:
1: a copse of crabapple trees
2: a copse of birch trees
3: a copse of beech trees
4: a copse of wild cherry trees
5: a copse of elm trees
6: a copse of ash trees
7: a copse of blackthorn trees
8: a copse of hawthorn trees
9: a copse of hornbeam trees
10: a copse of willow trees
11: a copse of maple trees
12: a copse of poplar trees
13: a copse of black alder trees
14: a copse of oak trees
15: a copse of rowan trees
16: a copse of yew trees
17: a copse of ironwood trees
18: a copse of horse chestnut trees
19: a copse of large-leaf linden trees
20: a copse of hazel trees

If not, your issue is mostly getting to either novice or amateur forage--skill failure should only be this common if you're tackling things way above your skill level, as I was saying, but if you're only able to find random trees, your problem is probably a lack of skill in two skills(though forage isn't necessary once you gain a bit more competency in woodcraft, I'd say).

Very Common Items:
1: a stick of $woodtype wood
Common Items:
1: a copse of crabapple trees
2: a copse of birch trees
3: a copse of beech trees
4: a copse of wild cherry trees
5: a copse of elm trees
6: a copse of ash trees
7: a copse of blackthorn trees
8: a copse of hawthorn trees
9: a copse of hornbeam trees
10: a copse of willow trees
11: a copse of maple trees
12: a copse of poplar trees
13: a copse of black alder trees
14: a copse of oak trees
15: a copse of rowan trees
16: a copse of yew trees
17: a copse of ironwood trees
18: a copse of horse chestnut trees
19: a copse of large-leaf linden trees
20: a copse of hazel trees

If not, your issue is mostly getting to either novice or amateur forage--skill failure should only be this common if you're tackling things way above your skill level, as I was saying, but if you're only able to find random trees, your problem is probably a lack of skill in two skills(though forage isn't necessary once you gain a bit more competency in woodcraft, I'd say).

I agree, having the forage survey skill would probably help a lot - but I do not have it. Again, this thread wasn't meant to get rid of the forage grind that I suffer through - I do not mind this part of the process, I have played countless hours of MMOs in my past.

The thing I am frustrated with is getting a craft timer addition equal to a success when scouting for a tree to chop down in a copse. As it is currently, if you succeed in finding a tree to chop down you go through a much longer craft echo process, detailing how you start chopping into the tree and it falls and THWAAAACK, etc.

But if you fail, it simply states "You failed to find a suitable tree." or something similar, and you still get the full timer of two hours. I think this specifically, is the problem I have.

This is a part of the ongoing craft audit. There are a huge number of failure timers that are excessively long, but you have a very few people going through approximately 2k crafts. Please be patient, but you will see changes gradually.

[Petition:***] Why is there a pretty pink pony with doe eyes and a party-balloon cutie mark in the group?

Taurgalas wrote:This is a part of the ongoing craft audit. There are a huge number of failure timers that are excessively long, but you have a very few people going through approximately 2k crafts. Please be patient, but you will see changes gradually.

I understand, and greatly appreciate the efforts being done. I mostly just needed to highlight the issue and vent about it a little for my own sake.

Don't want to derail the thread but I never know when I should be getting the Forage skill, some resources are scout and gathered with Forage while others you need an additional skill to scout or gather (river mussels for example), the wiki specifies for timbers you need it but there are plenty other uses it doesn't.
Maybe the skill should concentrate how to scout all resources to make it a must pick for people venturing the woods and to set guideline.

"A lithe, magic orange fox with a maniacal grin stares at you with beady eyes"

Part of (a major part of) this craft audit is not just identifying those items where the skillchecks are off or imbalanced, but more importantly, to look at recategorizing, decreasing categories (and crafts where unnecessary) but to ensure some of these stranger cross-skill crafts are identified and investigated.

Not everything that is important for woodland people will be foraging. Herbalism plays a vital role for healers, both for first aid and medicinally. Foraging is important for trees as well as cooking. It's honestly one of the most convoluted areas I've started analysis on. Once we figure out how and what will be adjusted, first we'll actually make the adjustments in the crafts, then we'll take a look at the help files related to those skills.

This audit sadly covers a lot of what's currently broken. Armor, weapons, foraging, and yes, woodcrafting. I can't promise it will all be fixed the way players want it to be, but it will all be looked at and adjustments will come.

[Petition:***] Why is there a pretty pink pony with doe eyes and a party-balloon cutie mark in the group?